"To think that I was fool enough to take a passage with such a set!" he groaned. "To me, so new to this country, all these fellows look alike. They are rough, ill-dressed, and very free and easy in their manners. I never imagined for a moment that these fellows were other than ranchers returning to their work. What am I to do?"
He stood leaning on the rail of the river boat, his eyes fixed upon the lights from the saloons ashore, while he listened to the songs and shouts which issued from them. Then his attention was caught by a faint glimmer some yards astern, and, having peered into the darkness for some few minutes, he was able to detect the outline of the boat in which Mr. Blunt and Dudley were sleeping.
"Ah, I see the plan!" he said. "These ruffians slack off their cable and float down on that boat, then they board her. The sailor said that they had friends ashore who would rush to help them by means of the gangway stretching from the boat to the wharf. After that—— Goodness, it means murder! The fellow said as much. They will kill this Englishman and take all that he has got."
The very thought set the young fellow trembling with excitement. He walked feverishly up and down the deck, muttering beneath his breath, and endeavoring to make up his mind to some course of action. For in a flash he realized a fact which had been slowly dawning upon him for the last half-hour, a fact which a shrewder youth would have gathered in an instant. He, a young Englishman, fresh from home and entirely ignorant of the country and its people, had by chance fallen in with a gang of desperadoes who were about to attack a fellow countryman of his and to murder him. By pure chance he had become acquainted with their plans, and now he alone stood between the victim and his attackers. Ought he to move in the matter? Why should he? It was not his affair. This Englishman was an entire stranger to him, and why should he incur danger for a stranger?
The thoughts flashed through his brain as he walked feverishly up and down. Conscience, common sense, his own manhood, told him that he ought to act, that it was his duty to do something; while fear of the consequences to himself and his own natural want of resolution held him back, and kept him answering the calls for action with excuses. He was in a pitiable condition, and, had he been left to himself, might have walked the deck for an hour before coming to some conclusion. However, it happened that a minute later the cabin door burst open with a bang, and the sailor reeled out on to the deck. Despite his condition, this ruffian still had sufficient sense about him to realize that noise might warn the people in the neighboring boat, and if he had not had that sense, the leader of the band quickly reminded him.
"Be silent!" he called out peremptorily. "You will wake everyone with your clumsiness. Come back to the cabin."
"Right, shipmate! I jest thought I'd get on deck to look to the shaver. So there yer are, taking a mouthful of air. Jest you come along below, youngster."
The man was suspicious. There was something about this young fellow that he did not understand, and though a few minutes before he had been sure that he had gained an eager recruit for the band, for the stranger's reception of the details of the plot had been all that he could have wished for, his absence now, his disinclination to drink with his new comrades, awoke suspicion in the drink-soddened mind of the sailor.
"Jest you step below, me hearty," he said huskily; "capt'n's orders is that all hands keeps under hatches till the time comes."
"In a minute! I am watching the shore, for I think I see men moving," was the hasty answer. "Go below yourself, and say that I am keeping a watch. I will come and tell you if anything happens."